March 10, 2013

Via Metafilter. I didn't even know Whoopi Goldberg was ever connected to "Star Trek," but that isn't the important thing here.

In the comments, please stay on topic, which is this particular video clip. Don't bring up the usual grievances about Whoopi. That's been done many times. The larger topic, also legitimate here, is the effect of art on the individual.

Her character was something of a token - you couldn't see Michael Dorn was black under all the makeup and she replaced the security officer (white actress) as a saloonkeeper, so they were stretching things.

That said, a lot of people gain some kind of connection through regulars on TV shows.

It's one thing Jack Warner never understood. He worked with giants up on the silver screen (Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Jimmy Cagney, Edward G), but he never understood the people on TV were even more important - they were family.

Well, good on for Caryn, she's bragged about being a welfare queen, now she can say she's done something useful.

--To finish that I was saying about beauty, said Stephen, the most satisfying relations of the sensible must therefore correspond to the necessary phases of artistic apprehension. Find these and you will find the qualities of universal beauty. Aquinas says: ad pulcritudinem tria requiruntur, integritas, consonantia, claritas. I translate it so: Three things are needed for beauty, wholeness, harmony and radiance. Do these correspond to the phases of apprehension? Are you following? --Of course, I am, said Lynch. If you think I have an excrementitious intelligence run after Donovan and ask him to listen to you. Stephen pointed to a basket which a butcher's boy had slung inverted on his head. --Look at that basket, he said. --I see it, said Lynch. --In order to see that basket, said Stephen, your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not the basket. The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended. An esthetic image is presented to us either in space or in time. What is audible is presented in time, what is visible is presented in space." But, temporal or spatial, the esthetic image is first luminously apprehended as selfbounded and selfcontained upon the immeasurable background of space or time which is not it. You apprehend it as one thing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its wholeness. That is integritas. --Bull's eye! said Lynch, laughing. Go on.

--Then, said Stephen, you pass from point to point, led by its formal lines; you apprehend it as balanced part against part within its limits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. In other words the synthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis of apprehension. Having first felt that it is one thing you feel now that it is a thing. You apprehend it as complex, multiple, divisible, separable, made up of its parts, the results of its parts and their sum, harmonious. That is consonantia. --Bull's eye again! said Lynch wittily. Tell me now what is claritas and you win the cigar. --The connotation of the word, Stephen said, is rather vague. Aquinas uses a term which seems to be inexact. It baffled me for a long time. it would lead you to believe that he had in mind symbolism or idealism, the supreme quality of beauty being a light from some other world, the idea of which the matter is but the shadow, the reality of which it is but the symbol. I thought he might mean that claritas is the artistic discovery and representation of the divine purpose in anything or a force of gener- alisation which would make the esthetic image a universal one, make it outshine its proper conditions. But that is literary talk. I understand it so. When you have apprehended that basket as one thing and have then analysed it according to its form and apprehended it as a thing you make the only synthesis which is logically and esthetically permissible. You see that it is that thing which it is and no other thing. The radiance of which he speaks is the scholastic quidditas, the whatness of a thing. This supreme quality is felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his imagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal." The instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition which the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase almost as beautiful as Shelley's, called the enchantment of the heart. Stephen paused and, though his companion did not speak, felt that his words had called up around them a thoughtenchanted silence. --What I have said, he began again, refers to beauty in the wider sense of the word, in the sense which the word has in the literary tradition. In the marketplace it has another sense. When we speak of beauty in the second sense of the term our judgment is influenced in the first place by the art itself and by the form of that art. The image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical form, the form, wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others. --That you told me a few nights ago, said Lynch, and we began the famous discussion.

--I have a book at home, said Stephen, in which I have written down question which are more amusing than yours were. In finding the answers to them I found the theory of esthetic which I am trying to explain. Here are some questions I set myself: Is a chair finely made tragic or comic? Is the portrait of Mona Lisa good if I desire to see it? Is the bust of Sir Philip Crampton lyrical, epical or dramatic? Can excrement or a child or a louse be a work of art? If not, why not? --Why not, indeed? said Lynch, laughing. --If a man hacking in fury at a block of wood, Stephen continued, make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not? --That's a lovely one, said Lynch, laughing again. That has the true scholastic stink. --Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues to write of. The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spoke of distinguished clearly one from another. Even in literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. The lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is more conscious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeling emotion. The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an epical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotional gravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the action like a vital sea. This progress you will see easily in that old English ballad Turpin Hero which begins in the first person and ends in the third person. The dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and eddied around each person fills every person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The personality ofthe artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak. The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

It must be very gratifying to find out that your work touched someone so deeply. She handled that very well, too. At least, I don't think she was acting. I think her emotion was genuine.

So many actors don't seem capable of accepting people's thanks for their roles. They manage to communicate that they would rather be acknowledged for their acting talent rather than the role. The role was just job. And then, there are those who develop a real hatred for a role. I understand William Shatner once felt that way about Captain Kirk, but in his documentary The Captains, he mentioned how much it touched him to hear a pilot tell him he became a pilot because of Star Trek and Captain Kirk. Not as moving as Whoopi's autistic fan, but it did make him reconsider his attitude about the role.

It's like STNG created that role just for her, and she's excellent. Best hat award.

She's great in everything and moves me deeply. Like the urban nun that sings, in English, not the Dominique-nique-nique dooby doo be dooby dooIl ne parle que du bon dieu, not that one, and the other movie too where she has e.s.p. and the ghost makes her cash a check and then give it away. She totally rocks that dress and hat too.

Whoopie had done wonderful things with her acting talent. I should love her talent purely for it's impact on the people she touches with it. This young man is a better more in touch person because of a part she played. Wouldn't you think that would be enough? For him it is, but it's not enough for her.

I'm with Original Mike. The Next Generation was the greatest Star Trek ever. And Whoopi was great in it, as well. I think she's a very talented actress. I know as a teacher that the greatest thing is when an old student or parent tells you what a difference you've made. There's nothing better. It appears she feels the same.

She was authentically touched by his courage to stand there and say what he said. Speaking in front of an audience is difficult for most people and he did it though his autism. A wow moment. Very touching.

Her character of Guinan was awesome. I really wish Star Trek TNG explored her race more. They dropped hints here and there as to who they were and I really wanted to know how they interacted with the Q, but the show never went that way. Would have been cool though.

I want to say the first Star Trek was the best because it was the best written and had all the iconic characters, but, at least for the first few seasons, I enjoyed watching TNG more. Eventually it became too much of a soap opera. And Voyager sucked from the word go.

But on to Whoopi--I somehow missed the part where she changed hs life. He's autistic, he's a Star Trek fan, he got married. Where exactly does Whoopi come in? And, wow! she's really put on the pounds since I last saw her.

Guinan's race were mostly killed and scattered by the Borg. That's why you don't know much about them. I liked best the multiple-part episode where they wind up in San Francisco with Mark Twain, and Guinan is there, waaaay pre-Enterprise, because her race is extremely long-lived.

I just recently streamed all the seasons of TNG and was again surprised at how good the Guinan character was, and how it is so...NOT Goldie. But I'm glad it was there.

I love TNG. Loved the TOS, too, but connected more with TNG, because my son is Data. I would have expected the mildly autstic man to identify with Data, because Data is who they are.

"Her character was something of a token - you couldn't see Michael Dorn was black under all the makeup and she replaced the security officer (white actress) as a saloonkeeper, so they were stretching things."

What about LeVar Burton? He was obviously black behind that visor. Goldberg actually had an affinity for the Star Trek series going back to Nichelle Nichols' character in the original series.

I had once auditioned for a part with an extended character arc on 'BJ and the Bear', but -- alas-- the part was Not Me. However, that was when I first met Robert Urich on the back lot. A fine man, with fine hot tub etiquette."

I think that I probably liked DS9 the best, too, but in the end I was disappointed because I always had different expectations. I'd "see" how something could be a really awesome development in TNG or whatever and then they'd go do something else. DS9 was advertised as "darker", but it wasn't. They were going to have Voyager and I thought... oh, wouldn't it be awesome if it was Geordie's mom? She was a captain and her ship disappeared and that actress would be totally awesome as the captain in a series and we got... Jayneway. And then they were going to have the rebels on the ship and the tension lasted all of two episodes. Blah!!

But really, the show had to connect with non-sci-fi people and it *did*. That's a pretty impressive thing to do.

I never cared for Star Trek Generations because I was a loyal original Star Trek fan. Captain James T. Kirk was my first crush. Yes, it's true. I didn't like Donny Osmond or any of the other shmultzy singers of the day. I liked shmultzy star fleet Captains in reruns.

The video clip is touching, the guy has such a hard time getting the words out. I did love Whoopi in the Color Purple. I wonder if that movie could be made today? So much of it is terrible black on black cruelty. The book is even better then the movie, I wonder if they still read it in college?

He mistook her for the actress who played Lt. Uhuru. An understandable mistake, and Whoopie with characteristic tact and delicacy did not bring this to his attention.....I always thought Spock was kind of autisttic. Maybe autistic people are an evolutionary leap. In a thousand years we'll all be Vulcans.

The Color Purple has long been one of my favorite movies. I thought she was great in it. The retarded character she plays on The View is really unpleasant though. Maybe that's the intent of the writers. If so, she really delivers.

What about LeVar Burton? He was obviously black behind that visor. Goldberg actually had an affinity for the Star Trek series going back to Nichelle Nichols' character in the original series.

My thoughts exactly to the token comment. Rather than being the token, she was playing homage to Nichols, who really was a token. Nichols admitted that she disliked being the token and thought about quitting the show. The Reverend ML King told her that she was an inspiration, and her role as just a member of the crew like all the others was inline with his dream. So Nichols stayed with the show.

It is probable that I don't understand autism and am mistaken in thinking that those who are autistic are also introverts...but I found it funny that Whoopi's first impulse was to HUG the man who just told her he is autistic.

Other than that, I was moved by his courage and by her reaction to it. She gets so much crap about her political posturing that it will be good for her to see that her acting talent has a more meaningful effect on people.

Always real somehow yet one of the greatest imitators of life, born to a welfare mom, educated on the streets, and married to her drug rehab counselor at 17...pregnant.She had the baby--which means shes is pragmatic...and a grandmother at 34. Divorced from 3 husbands with 6 years in between and 13 years since the last one. The ST role was listener, caregiver, sage--probably closest to who she thinks she is. I'll bet she was the kid who carried the weight her parent's mistakes---entertaining, wanting attention, acting out, giving up and then angry, fighting back.We fund the welfare state out of pure intentions but sometimes it does more harm than good. Women from that mentality see it as a safety net and do foolish things like walking on tightropes soaring high above human nature. You can't defy gravity.

I like TOS best of all with DS9 being a close second with the other three vying for third place.

I never cared for Guinan or Ten Forward. They were added (a) because Golberg was a Star Trek fan making her character the ultimate “Mary Sue” and (b) somehow the creators of TNG thought that what the Enterprise D was missing was another source of recreation for the cast members. Because seeing them do their jobs apparently wasn’t interesting enough for fans so we had to see them hang out in a bar drinking non-alcoholic drinks.

Something I noticed with all the Star Trek shows is that they would be good radio plays. You don't need to watch them to follow the action. Everything is very dialogue-heavy, the special effects are nothing special, and everything is explained verbally. If you aren't watching you won't miss anything.